BAPTIST PRINCIPLES AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

FROM the earliest period of the Christian Church to the present time, the most consistent and earnest advocates of freedom of conscience in matters of religion, have been men holding the views of Christian faith and duty now held by the body to which we belong. "Baptist Principles and Religious Liberty" have in all ages been associated with each other, through struggle, and suffering, and triumph. In the first century they were united in the doctrines and acts of the apostles. We find them embodied, in a subsequent age, in the history of the Donatists. Later on, they re-appear in the Albigenses. During the Reformation, they were advocated by the Lollards and Mennonites. From the Continent they came to England. They were sent from England across the Atlantic to America. They distinguish, in this nineteenth century, the Baptists throughout the world..

The testimony of the early Baptists of this country deserves special notice. "From the beginning," to use the words of Locke, "they were the friends and advocates of absolute liberty-just and true liberty-equal and impartial liberty." They asserted the right of private judgment in all religious questions; the privilege to worship God according to individual conviction; man's responsibility for his belief and worship to God alone; the independency of the Church of Christ of the secular power; and its freedom from all State patronage and State control.

When Elizabeth persecuted them with bitter hatred,

they declared that according to God's word, "Christ is the Supreme Head of the Church; that the Queen had no right to frame ecclesiastical government, nor to appoint ministers of religion; that the Church ought to be composed of believers only; and that the baptism of infants is unlawful." In 1611, when several Baptists, who had found in Holland an asylum from persecution here, returned, they embodied this deliverance in their Confession of Faith:-"The magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of religion, because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the Church and conscience." Leonard Busher, addressing his "Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience," to James the First and his Parliament, affirms that "Persecution of such as do preach and teach Christ, is a great hindrance to the liberty of the Gospel. And the King and Parliament may please to permit all sorts of Christians; yea, Jews, Turks, and Pagans, as long as they are peaceable, and no malefactors." The year after Busher's "Plea" was printed, Mr. Helwisse's church in London published their treatise on "Persecution for Religion, Judged and Condemned;" in which they say, "We do unfeignedly acknowledge the authority of earthly magistrates, God's blessed ordinance, and that all earthly authority and command appertains unto them; but all men must let God alone with His right, which is to be Lord and Lawgiver to the soul." In their "Humble Supplication," they declare that, "There is but one Lord, and one Lawgiver over the conscience, therefore no man ought to be compelled to a worship, wherein he hath not faith, by persecution." When, in 1646, the Baptist Churches in London drew up a Confession, they said,— "It is the magistrate's duty to tender the liberty of men's consciences, which is the tenderest thing unto all conscientious men, and most dear unto them, and without which all other liberties will not be worth the naming, much less enjoying." The next year, Samuel Richardson published his, "Necessity of Toleration;" and propounded the following question, among others of a like nature,-" Whe

ther it be not a natural law for every man that liveth, to worship that which he thinketh is God, and as he thinketh he ought to worship; and to force otherwise, will be concluded an oppression of those persons so forced?" I need not add to these expressions of opinion; suffice it to say, that in all subsequent Pleas, Confessions, and Creeds, the unrestricted right of every man to his religious belief and worship is clearly and earnestly maintained.

As soon as Baptist principles, borne on the crested waves of the Atlantic, touched the shores of the New World and took root there, they yielded the same fruit. Roger Williams, one of the noble sons to whom Wales has given birth, and of whom as Welshmen we may justly feel proud, having been banished by the Puritans from Salem for conscience' sake, founded the state of Rhode Island, the first state in the world founded on the principles of perfect religious liberty; and concluded the Magna Charta of the newly-established government thus: "All men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. AND LET THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH WALK IN THIS COLONY WITHOUT MOLESTATION, IN THE NAME OF JEHOVAH THEIR GOD, FOR EVER AND EVER." He says in his "Bloudy Tenent of Persecution," "It is the will and commandment of God that, since the coming of His Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antiChristian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in soul matters, able to conquer: to wit, the sword of God's Spirit, the Word of God." These broad and enlightened sentiments appear in all his writings. "SOUL LIBERTY" was the imperial prize for which he fought, and which at length he won.

Above a hundred years after, the Baptists in Virginia, memorialising the Legislature, declared that they held the mere toleration of religion by the civil government to be insufficient; that no state religious establishment ought to exist; and that all religious bodies ought to occupy, in the eye of the law, an equal position. "We hold," said they,

"that the religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate."

For their consistent advocacy and defence of these immortal principles, our fathers sustained the loss of property, liberty, and even life; and, like their predecessors in primitive times, rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ. Latimer, in his fourth sermon before Edward the Sixth, bears witness to their heroism. "The Ana-Baptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw them not myself), went to their death, even intrepide, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully.' And then he adds, with a cruel levity, "Well, let them go." The readiness of the Continental Baptists to suffer for the truth rather than renounce it, commanded the attention of Romanists, and received their recognition. "If," said the President of the Council of Trent, "you behold their cheerfulness in suffering persecution, the Ana-Baptists run before all other heretics." Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, Wales, America, all have furnished Baptists to swell "the noble army of martyrs." Our history has been written in blood:

"Blood that was shed

In confirmation of the noblest claim,—
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free."

In this land, from the year 1400, when William Sawtree was burned in London, down to the close of the seventeeth century, a constant succession of witnesses, who chose to obey God rather than man, bore suffering testimony to the truth. Some were put to death; some were fined; some were condemned to imprisonment, and for long years lay in dark, damp dungeons; some were exposed to the hardships of exile, banished from their friends and homes; some had to endure in the pillory the taunts and cruelty of the ignorant and vicious mob. Among them were names of note:-John Bunyan, the prince of